Mesquite and Cherry Smoked Turkey
Well, for those that know me well know that I decided to go vegetarian for 2019, but that didn’t change the fact that we had two extra turkeys in our garage freezer that needed to be used up! My local grocery store had extra turkeys after Thanksgiving for $0.37/lb so I got two more turkeys for around $5 each! Nick’s dad is coming to visit us next month and he’s a big carnivore so we thought it would be a good idea to practice our skills using our electric smoker and test out the first one, so we can take notes to see if we needed to make any improvements.
First, we cleaned the inside of the turkey by removing the neck, giblets, and in our case, a “prepared turkey gravy” bag that was also inside. We rubbed it with a seasoning we had on hand that was Weber Roasted Garlic & Herb Seasoning, which has the ingredients of garlic, salt, spices, sweet red pepper, etc. I added extra kosher salt, black pepper, and 1 tsp lemon zest to the mix because I mostly tasted garlic and herbs. We rubbed the inside and outside of the bird. I cut up a white onion and stuffed that inside and sealed the cavity by threading it closed with some pins and twine (it stays a lot more moist this way).
Our turkey was around 13.5 lbs. We set the temp at 240 and smoked it until the turkey’s internal temp hit 165, which took around 8 hours. Nick says that most of the temps that he found when he was searching said to smoke around 275 to reduce the amount of hours it was smoking for, however, our smoker is a bit unpredictable with staying at temperatures, so a constant 240 was the closest we were able to get. Hey, low and slow is sometimes the best anyway!
And it came out like this! We were super happy with it! Nick has been eating it all week and said it was really good, and surprisingly moist. I know full turkeys aren’t available all year round, but the same techniques could be applied to a whole chicken, etc. Just be mindful of checking the internal temperature to know when it’s done (since a chicken is much smaller, it wouldn’t take 8 hours).
I hope this satisfies the carnivores out there for Thanksgiving, or any other time of year!
Mesquite and Cherry wood Smoked Turkey
Ingredients
- 1 turkey thawed
- 1 yellow onion roughly chopped
- 4 tbsp Weber Roasted Garlic & Herb Seasoning* see notes
- 1 tbsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 tsp lemon zest (about 1 lemon)
- 3/4 cup mesquite wood chips
- 1/4 cup cherry wood chips
Instructions
- Prep turkey – ensure it is properly thawed and cleaned. Remove giblets and neck, and anything that remains in carcass.
- Rub seasonings all over bird – including inside carcass. Stuff with onion, and seal with twine to retain moisture
- Smoke at 240F until internal temp hits 165F. Our 13.5 lb bird took about 8 hours.
- Rest and enjoy!